For one, painting is a large river, while for others, it is just a small stream that its root is from the depthness of the soul. One can paint everything from the universe, trees, animals, but on the other hands, one can paint just a few things like a way to walk into their senseless inner side. The painter maybe tried to follow this particular way of making art, being clumsy at first, even without knowing what painting really is, but later to whisper to herself, in the corner of the house and not being concerned with the society.

I told the artist: “I would write that you are the person who likes to stay inside of the buffalo horn,, but don’t erase what I said”. This comment is not a compliment or criticism, it is just a question of whether it is necessary to choose such a narrow road to walk on. First of all, they are a few landscapes, with a few objects in the quiet darkness, and then, coming a series of fishes paintings of Tinh Gia (Thanh Hoa). The beach and those fishermen, the fishing market, image of all the fishes placed on the large baskets – they all suggest something about life. Between small simple things and large, huge things, there exists the dryness of death of those fishes and the immortal energy of the sea. They are so much, but they are also very lonely and meaningless. The artist has portrayed her feeling through different forms of fishes and the beach, it’s like being struggled in the real life that is impossible to control, and don’t know if there is a “self” that existed. So, painting was born from the worriness, the anxiety as a way to light, sometimes dark and sad, and other times are strongly contrast like the fight within “self”.

Painting is forming, integrating what one see in reality with the feeling which is impossible to discriminate.

November 2005
Art Critic

Phan Cam Thuong